Hi all, I just need some information that I can't seem to find on any perl book i've been looking into and from what I've seen on any websites too. I'm doing a (get this) 15 page report on perl and I can't find some of the stuff I've been asked to look for!! If anyone can help out, with a webpage, or just tell me or email it to me, that would be great! Here are some of my questions:

1. Is this language typed or untyped? If typed, is it strong typed or weak typed? and does it support polymorphism?

2. How well standardized is Perl? and are there many dialects or just one?

3. How well principled is Perl? Are most of the ideas in the language based to meet a specific smantics or is it around a particular implementation?

ok, i am gonna take a shot at this: but take this to heart, i learned perl on my own, not from any course, so i may interprite these Q's differently than suppose to, but here it goes...

1, Perl is a weak (or loose) typed language. by this i think you are asking the question of "how stingy is the language?" with Perl, you do NOT have to declare variables before using them, and if you call to an undeclared variable, Perl just figures that it is 0, and does not complain... I hope i understood it correctly.

2, standardized... hrmm.. well what i am reading from this is: do you have a certain pattern that you have to follow from perl.. the answer to that is NO, Perl is flexible in that there are a wide array of sormats that you can use with perl to get the same job done. but, one thing that Perl does not do (besides for using Perl/TK which is nice but is not practical for internet use), you cannot run realtime web/cgi programs "ie: java". again, not sure if that was what you were asking..

3, Ok, you got me on this one, i do not understand what you are asking.. so i wont embarrise myself any further by trying to answer it...

please be kind if i am way off base, i am just trying to help answer your questions, and i do NOT guarentee in any form the consequences of such answers if you use any such response in your report and they are not right, HOWEVER, if they are right then... remember to give me special thanks in your report.. (front page middle will do :)

And about polymorphism: You do not have to provide a prototype or information about the parameters of a method. You can give your methods whatever parameters you think it may need and let the method decide which parameters it accepts or what to do with them. So I think you can say that Perl supports polymorphism.